


Brother's Keeper

by ResplendentRi



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games)
Genre: Anders and Cullen are brothers, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tags May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-01-16 14:50:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18523756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ResplendentRi/pseuds/ResplendentRi
Summary: [Based on a Kink Meme Prompt]When he was twelve years old, a boy was ripped away from his family and taken to the Circle.Six years later, a boy decided that he wanted to become a Templar, to find the lost brother he barely remembered.Their separate destinies would shake Thedas and shape Thedas, but at the risk of losing themselves in the process.





	1. Catalyst

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really consider this a proper fill because at this point it's gone totally off-script of the prompt, but credit where credit is due, the original Kink Meme prompt that inspired this fic is here: 
> 
> https://dragonage-kink.dreamwidth.org/89304.html?thread=359299800

**Honnleath, 9:13**

Mia woke up to the orange glow of flames in the window and the sound of raised voices outside. At first she thought that it was morning, but the light outside wasn't the thin rays of dawn. It was a dark orange kind of glow, like a hearth fire. That woke her up right away. She sat upright, but when she realized that she couldn't feel any heat or smell smoke, she went to the window and looked out to see where the fire was. Their barn up on the hill was burning.

She heard the animals carrying on, and at first she was afraid they were still trapped in the barn, but then she saw them loose in the field, most of them clustered anxiously at the fence furthest from the barn. But she couldn't see her parents or her brother anywhere, and that couldn't be right.

"Mimi?" Mia turned. Her baby brother Cullen was awake too, standing in his crib and watching her with wide, curious gold eyes. The other bed in the room, their older brother's bed, was empty and rumpled. Mia, serious and responsible for a six-year-old, went over to the crib and pulled her younger brother out, setting him on the floor and taking his hand.

"Let's go find Grayson," she said. Their older brother would know where their parents were. Cullen nodded and clung to her fingers with his fat baby fist. She couldn't smell any smoke, but she did as Mama always taught her for when there was a fire, putting her palm to the door and checking for smoke before she opened the door. Cullen stumbled trying to keep up with his big sister as she ran to the front door, and Mia turned and scooped him up, barely holding onto him as she reached up to pull the door open.

When she got outside, she found her parents and her older brother. Her father and her brother were soaking wet, and Grayson had a sooty sheep blanket wrapped around his shoulders. As Mia watched, their father raised his hand and slapped Grayson, hard enough to knock him off his feet. The sound of their mother screaming drowned out Mia's gasp.

"Oswin, please! He said it was an accident!" their mother begged. She put herself between Grayson and their father, cutting off his advance. Grayson whimpered and ducked his head, pulling the blanket tighter around him like a shield.

"That's magic, Maike," their father argued. "Next he'll burn the house down, too."

"No!" Grayson cried. "Please, I promise it wasn't magic, it was an accident. My lantern fell out of the hayloft, I swear!"

"The lantern's still in the kitchen, boy," their father said. He met their mother's eyes and then stepped around her to grab their lanky brother by his upper arm. "Come on, that's where you'll sit too until the Templars come for you." Grayson wailed in fear, pushing at their father's iron grip. Mia flinched. She'd felt that grip a few times, too. Their father wasn't a cruel man, and Mia knew that he loved all of them, but he had a strict standard for how they should behave, and little tolerance for misbehavior.

"No! Please, let me stay, please please please," he begged.

"Quiet! Or you'll wait in the cellar instead!"

"Where's Grayson going?" Mia asked. It was then that their mother noticed her and Cullen for the first time. She knelt down in front of them, pulling them into her arms and burying her tear-streaked face in Mia's hair. Her hug was as strong as their father's stern hand, her belly round and taut between them, as if she was afraid that Mia would be pulled out of her arms next.

"Grayson has to go away for a while, love," she choked out.

"No!  _ Mother! _ " Grayson cried out in despair, reaching his hand out to her and fighting against their father's efforts to drag him back to the house. "Don't let them take me, I don't want to go! I wanna stay with you!" Their mother didn't say anything, but she was shaking as she held onto Mia and Cullen. Mia watched over her shoulder as their father dragged Grayson back into the house, kicking and screaming. They could still hear him, until their father struck him again and the sound of the slap rang out in the silence that followed.

Mia, who'd been spanked plenty of times but couldn't remember having ever seen their father raise his hand to Grayson before tonight, jumped at the sound and held Cullen tighter. The toddler was shaking in fear, breath wavering with tiny, hiccuping sobs. Their mother pulled back, gently pulling Cullen from Mia's arms to her own and standing, taking her daughter's hand. She led them back inside, past their brother. Grayson was sitting at the table, his head bowed and his straight blond hair hanging down to hide his face. The sheep blanket still hung loose over his shoulders, and droplets of water ran off the end of his long nose and dripped from the ends of his hair. She stopped walking to stare, her heart breaking.

"Why does Grayson have to go away?" she asked their father. He was pulling on his hat to leave, and he turned to look at her as if he was just now realizing she was there.

"Go to your room, Mia," he said, turning away from her.

"No!" she said stubbornly. "Why does Grayson have to leave? Where is he  _ going? _ " Their mother tugged on her hand.

"Come on, Mia," she said. Mia reached out for Grayson with her other hand, fingers splayed wide and grasping.

"Grayson!" she cried. Her big brother flinched, but didn't look up at her. Mia felt like her breath was knocked out of her, her eyes going wide. Her fingers clenched and she stared at him, but she was too shocked to resist as their mother pulled her back to her room. When the door closed, their mother sat down on Mia's bed with Cullen on her knee and wiped at Mia's cheeks, and that was when Mia realized that she had been crying. She hiccuped and sobbed, throwing her arms around her mother.

"Oh, my darling girl," their mother murmured, stroking Mia's long, curly hair. Mia felt her press a kiss to the crown of her head. The front door to the house slammed loudly, and Mia flinched. "No matter what happens," their mother said seriously. "I want you to remember what happened tonight. I want you to remember your big brother Grayson, no matter what your father says. Can you do that for me, love?" Mia nodded miserably into her dress.

"But why does Grayson have to go away?" she asked. She could still picture him, broken and hurt at the table. "Will he come back soon?"

"I don't know," their mother said honestly. "Maybe one day. Grayson is special, my darling. He has magic. So he has to go to a place called the Circle. There will be other people with magic there, and he'll have tutors and a safe place where he can learn to control his magic so that he doesn't hurt anybody." Mia looked down at her chemise and picked at the hem. It sounded nice to have magic. But not nice enough to leave her family behind.

"Did Grayson really set the barn on fire?" she asked.

"If he did, I know he didn't mean to. He would never do anything to hurt you or Cullen, love, he loves you very much. But that's why he has to go away, so that he doesn't accidentally hurt anyone."

The door to the bedroom creaked open and Grayson stood there, hunched miserably, his cheeks wet with tears. A livid bruise bloomed on his cheek where their father had struck him.

"Grayson!" Mia cried, breaking away from their mother and crashing into him. She squeezed her arms tight around his waist and he buckled, sobbing like a child against her.

"I don't want to go," he murmured. "Mother, don't let them take me, please don't let them take me..." Mia pulled her head back and turned to look up at their mother. She had stood, holding Cullen closer to her, her brown eyes looking at her oldest child with pity and fear and love. Cullen whined and held out his arms for Grayson.

"Grayson, please don't make this difficult," their mother whispered, lowering Cullen's arms. "Your father will be back any minute."

"I can run away! Just let me pack a couple things and I'll go and live in the woods where I won't bother anybody," he begged, pulling away from Mia and going over to his bed, his golden eyes fever-bright with tears as he grabbed his rumpled sheet and acted like he was going to fold it into a pack. "And I can still see you and Mia and Cullen and the baby, and Father doesn't ever have to know!" Grayson stopped, looking down at the pillow in his hands. All three of them had one, a redwork pillow with an animal embroidered on it. Their mother told them it was the animal she had a dream about while she was pregnant with them.

Their mother set Cullen down in his crib and then moved to hold her other son's hands, pressing the pillow toward his chest.

"Take it with you," she said. "Maybe... Maybe you can come home and visit. For feast days. Or your name day." Grayson said nothing. Their mother cupped his face in her hands and made him look up at her. "I love you, Grayson," she said.

"If you loved me, you wouldn't let them take me," he murmured, wrenching back from her when she tried to kiss his forehead. "I'm not dangerous, Mother! I'm your son! I want... I want to stay and help you with the baby!"

Cullen, tired of being ignored, started to cry loudly, pounding on the rail of his crib and reaching out for Grayson. Grayson went to him immediately. He looked at their mother, and didn't lift Cullen out of the crib, but he let the toddler hug him around the neck.

"Don't cry, Cullen," he said, rubbing his baby brother's back. Cullen hiccupped on his sobs, but went quiet, relaxing against his older brother. "You've got to be a big boy for me. I'll see you again someday."

"I'll write to you every day," Mia promised, with all the solemn authority a six-year-old can muster. Grayson looked at her. "Until you can come home." 

"I...I'd like that, Mia," Grayson said. He was trying to be strong, but his voice broke. He pulled back from Cullen, reluctantly, and clutched his pillow close to his chest with both arms. "I'm sorry..." he said finally. "I love you."

Metal plate pounded against the wooden door, and Grayson jumped like a startled deer. Their mother grabbed Mia and held her close, going over to Cullen's crib and wrapping one arm around him as well. Boots stomped through the house, and then the door to their room opened with a slam and a flash of white-blue light. Grayson started to scream but went silent.

"Stop!" their mother cried, as one of the templars scruffed Grayson roughly by the back of his shirt. "He's just a boy! He's not dangerous!"

"All mages are dangerous, ma'am," said another templar. "Are you and your children alright?"

"Yes! Yes!" their mother said. "He didn't  _ do _ anything, don't hurt him!" Grayson pushed at the ironclad hand holding him, his face red and tear-streaked with the effort of his silent screams, and Mia hid her face in her mother's dress when the templar struck him, sending him to his knees. She heard the rattle of manacles clamped onto him, the shuffling sound of him being dragged to his feet and pushed out the door. She didn't hear him scream again, and it was the absence of that sound that would haunt her, more than anything else.

She could feel her mother's hand shaking as it ran through her long curls, and when she looked up after the sound of clanking full plate had disappeared, she saw Cullen staring at the empty doorway, tears drying on his round cheeks and his brows pulled down over his gold eyes.

Life went on without Grayson, but it seemed a little darker, seemed like the colds lasted a little longer and the livestock was a little more unruly. All of the livestock had been spared from the barn fire, except for one. Mia looked everywhere, but Grayson's little orange barn cat Mister Tibbs, the one he'd raised from a kitten he found a year ago, was nowhere to be found. The neighbors helped rebuild the barn on the ashes of the old one, and no one spoke of Grayson in Honnleath again.

The birth of their new brother, Branson, a few weeks after Grayson was gone seemed like it took just a little more out of their mother than Cullen's did. And when Rosalie followed a couple of years later, it took a full six days before their mother was strong enough to leave her bed.

* * *

 

**Honnleath, 9:19**

"When I grow up," Cullen, now eight, declared proudly to the audience of his siblings. "I'm going to become a Templar." Mia, who had dreaded being twelve years old ever since she was six and now was relieved that her birthday had come and gone without any trace of flames, felt her breath catch in her chest. She wondered how much Cullen remembered of the night that she couldn't seem to forget.

"I wanna be a princess!" Rosalie, four, chirped from her seat on her big sister Mia's lap. "A cat princess!"

"There's no such thing as a cat princess, dummy," said Branson, six going on sixteen. "And if you wanna be a templar, 'Ser Cullen,' you better practice swimming with all that armor on!" At that, he pounced his older brother, sending them both splashing into the lake with a peal of laughter. Rosalie ran over to help, splashing them from the water as Cullen pinned Branson and started tickling him.

Later that night, Mia found Cullen outside, practicing with a "shield" he'd made out of tree bark and a stick for a sword. She tilted her head.

"So," she said. "A templar, 'Ser Cullen?'"

"Mm-hm," Cullen said, then let out a war cry as he charged a fence post with his shield, bouncing back. He swiped his sweat-damp curls back off of his face and tossed his head, looking at his sister. "I wanna find Grayson." Mia looked at Cullen then, really looked at him. His little jaw was set in determination, and his golden eyes were blazing.

"Father doesn't like hearing that name," Mia said carefully.

"Mother told us about him," he said. "You remember him, right, Mia? Mother says I was just a baby when he was taken away. But if I become a Templar, then can find him. And I can deliver the letters you've been writing for him." Mia felt a flush of warmth come to her face, thinking of the wooden box of letters that she  _ thought _ had been hidden from her little siblings' prying eyes. She'd written him letters for weeks after he was taken away, but after she never got a letter back she started only writing once a week, and then once a month, and then once a year. Eventually she stopped sending the letters, and kept them in a box tucked under her bed. 

"Branson and Rosie don't believe he's real," Cullen said, his brows furrowed. It was the same look he'd had on his face the night Grayson was taken. "But he is real, I remember him. At least, I think I do."

"He taught you to walk," Mia said with a smile. The furrow between Cullen's brows eased and he grinned, wide enough to show off his missing baby tooth.

"...Do you think he remembers me?" he asked. Mia pulled her brother into a hug and kissed his curly head. He already came up to her shoulder. Soon, he'd be taller than she was.

"Who could  _ ever _ forget you, Cully?" she teased him, ruffling his curls and then flopping them forward into his eyes.

"Ew," he said with a grin, pushing her away and tossing his head like an impatient colt to flick his hair back out of his face. "I told you stop calling me that,  _ Mimi _ ." She laughed and gave him a squeeze, and then let go.

He looked up at her. She reached out and took his face in her hands, still soft with baby fat that was only just starting to fade.

"If that's what you want to be, I know you'll make a great Templar," she told him. He smiled confidently.

"I know, I'm gonna," he said proudly.


	2. Missed Connections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thedas is a small, small place sometimes.

**Kinloch Hold, 9:29**

In Cullen's first tour of the Circle, the Knight-Commander introduced him to First Enchanter Irving and the Senior Enchanters, as well as the Knight-Captain, the Knight-Lieutenants, and his fellow recruits. His fellow Templars were friendly and easygoing, and the mages themselves were dignified and respectful. Any nerves that he had about his first assignment were quickly put at ease.

But he could never forget what had brought him to the Order, either. The faded and distant memory of a brother he'd been too young to know, the persistent feeling of something missing, it all had followed him throughout his training. The reminder had stayed with him as he learned more and more about how being a Templar was more than just heavy armor and swordplay, about (as he neared age 18 and the day of his vows came closer and closer) how joining the Order would bind him permanently with lyrium, would stay with him for the rest of his life.

He had a chance to reconsider. He had an opportunity to back out before he took his vows and his first dose of lyrium. But Grayson had never had that chance, had been bound to spend his life in a Circle from the night that the barn burnt down.

As the Knight-Captain showed him around Kinloch Hold, he kept an eye out for blond mages, listened intently to each name, straining his ears to hear any hint of "Grayson" or "Rutherford." He was prepared to stay in line, to work his way into the Knight-Commander's good graces until maybe, when he was less new, he would be allowed to see the roster of mages who lived or had lived in the tower.

Kinloch Hold was the only Circle in Ferelden; Grayson would have been brought here first (and he _had_ been brought here. The alternative, that something had happened on the road and Grayson had never made it to a Circle at all, was an unforgivable thought). Even if he'd been transferred to another Circle, there had to be a record of where he was sent.

"This is the worst part of the job," the Knight-Captain said, as he led Cullen down a flight of stairs to a nearly hidden door. "These are the holding cells. We use 'em when one of the mages needs to cool off in solitary for a while. Thankfully, they don't get used all that often - usually the threat is enough to bring them in line."

"Is there...anyone down here right now?" Cullen asked. The glow of the Knight-Captain's torch was the only source of light in the whole dank dungeon, and he could practically feel the mildew creeping from the stone onto his armor and the templar robe beneath it.

"There's one down here now; a flight risk. The other mages call him Anders. He doesn't speak to us." The Knight-Captain stopped in front of a heavy door, and Cullen felt sick to his stomach, craning his neck to peer inside through the bars. A lone mage sat inside, his hands shackled in front of him, his head bowed and long, unwashed blond hair hanging lank around his head. He didn't react in any way to indicate that he'd heard their approach, or even knew they were there. He was so still, for a moment Cullen wondered if he was Tranquil. Or worse, maybe, dead.

"Why did he run?" he asked. The Captain shrugged, glancing in the window of the cell. The firelight flickered in the straw-gold hair of the mage, caught the golden threads of his robes. The uneven light was the only thing that moved inside the cell.

"Not sure. We found him in Denerim, trying to buy passage to Kirkwall. Just had a couple of mages transferred there, maybe he wanted to go with. Greagoir said this is the seventh time he's run, so he's getting a year in solitary to try and teach him his lesson."

"A _year_?" Cullen repeated. He grew up sharing a room with three siblings, and then a barracks with a dozen other recruits - he couldn't imagine being trapped, alone, for an hour, let alone a year.

"If he weren't Harrowed, he'd've gotten the Rite for sure," the Captain countered, raising a questioning eyebrow at him. Cullen averted his gaze, but not to the mage in the cell. "Greagoir was almost mad enough to give it to him anyway, but Irving talked him out of it."

"You said they call him 'Anders.' Why? Don't they know his real name?"

"Far as I know, he's never said. They needed something to call him, and I guess they thought he looked Ander enough."

"How long has he been in here?" Cullen asked. He looked back through the bars at the mage, almost expecting him to have moved. But he was in the exact same pose that he'd been in when they'd come down here. The Knight-Captain pulled him away by walking back toward the stairs, clearly expecting the new recruit to follow.

"Just about three months, now. Only nine more to go-" the Knight-Captain stumbled, and there was a loud yowl followed by a hiss. In the dim light, Cullen saw an orange cat streak past him back toward the cells and then stop, turning and looking at him with intelligent golden eyes.

"Damn cat," the Knight-Captain swore. "Don't know why the mages like the damned things so much. Give me a hound any day." As Cullen watched, the cat leapt straight up off the ground and pulled itself through the barred window of the cell. There was something about the cat, but he couldn't place it.

"Recruit!" the Knight-Captain barked. Cullen snapped his gaze from the cell door.

"Sorry, Ser," he said. "Coming."

* * *

**Kirkwall, 9:31**

Sometimes, Anders wondered what had ever possessed him to follow Hawke in the first place. Figuratively speaking, of course, He knew well what was literally possessing him, although Justice wasn't too keen on the distraction that the wild woman provided.

She appealed to his healer's nature, he supposed. The part of him that still wanted to fix and protect small, broken things. Nothing about Marian Hawke was broken, but the way she conducted herself with utter reckless abandon made it inevitably feel like she was going to be, if left to her own devices. Her brother thought so too, if the fond exasperation with which he watched her was anything to go by.

Most recently, the trouble that her big blue eyes had gotten him into was an investigation into missing templar recruits. As much as he tried to grouch his way out of it, she won him over eventually by pointing out that the missing recruits were innocents who hadn't yet taken their vows, and that those who depended on them would suffer if they were never found.

She'd waggled her eyebrows at him when some of the girls in the Rose recognized him by name, and he was pretty sure that it had been years since he'd blushed that hard. Then his revenge had come when she'd spotted her uncle not seconds later.

Still, he was glad that he'd been there. When Hawke had called out to him to stop the wretched blood mage holding them all in thrall, he'd seen the knife at her throat and felt a bolt of cold fear lance through him, giving him the resolve he needed to break through her spell.

He was glad he'd been there to heal her after they fought their way through the entire Undercity. Justice roiled and rankled at the idea of fighting his fellow mages. But Tarohne and her kind were no ally of his; he believed in freedom, and he believed that blood mages abused that freedom by becoming what normal people feared most from them. They played right into the Chantry's propaganda, and they only made it easier to poison non-mages against them.

After Keran was saved and Hawke was finished rifling through the dead (it was almost an endearing trait to Anders; it reminded him of Warden-Commander Amell, and the way that she stopped after every battle and squirreled away every last bit and bob until she couldn't carry another thing), she offered Keran an escort back to the Gallows. She must have seen the look that crossed Anders' face because, after reassuring Keran that she would be there to vouch for him to the Captain, she fell back to the rear of the party with him as they headed out of the Undercity.

"You don't have to come," she said.

"Good," Anders said, "because I wasn't planning on adding 'getting captured by Templars' to my list of things to do today." She chuckled.

"Aw, but then who would I get to dramatically rescue?" she teased. "But what I was _going_ to say, before you interrupted," she added, elbowing him in the side, "was that I'm not going to make you come. But I want you to."

"What?" he asked. "Why?"

"Well, because I trust you not to run your mouth off and get us in trouble way more than I trust Merrill, for starters," she said. "And because they might ask me how I know for certain that Keran's not possessed. I can take the blame for doing it, if you tell me what you did, but I could use another witness to swear that a swarm of demons didn't come pouring out of the poor boy's taint."

He looked at her, then. Really looked at her, with blood splattered across her robes and her short black hair even messier than usual. The smear of blood across her nose was fresh, and it brought out the impossible blue of her eyes.

It was then that he realized that he'd never be able to say no to her. And that he had to stop at nothing to keep her from realizing this power.

"Fine," he said. "Someone has to keep you from getting yourself arrested, after all." She laughed.

"I think Carver has the more vested interest there," she said. "He's the one who would have to tell Mother."

With the matter settled she danced ahead to the front of the party and all of them, even Keran, were helpless to do anything but follow in the whirlwind she left in her wake.

"Cullen!" Hawke greeted enthusiastically. Anders' thoughts screeched to a halt. Keran ran forward to embrace his sister, full plate and all, and the boy was almost weeping with her as she touched his face in disbelief. Hawke grinned. "I've got good news, and I've got bad news."

The Templar turned to face them. He was tall, nearly as tall as Anders himself but broader, strong enough to bear the weight of Templar mail. His golden curls were slicked back off of his forehead, and his eyes were hooded, hollowed, haunted. But golden, like Anders' own.

Eyes that he'd gotten from his father.

He didn't hear what Hawke said next, was only dimly aware that she was speaking, and of the Knight-Captain's commanding, Fereldan voice answering her.

"Keran's fine," she said, so suddenly and certainly that Cullen turned from the recruit to look at her. "We did...tests, when we found him. He's not possessed, and he should keep his commission."

Cullen's hard, hawkish gaze raked over Hawke, stuck on the staff that brazenly jutted out behind her back, and then pinned Anders like a butterfly. His heart stopped beating and he felt the white-hot heat of Justice start to pulse through his veins, his blood growing hot and his hands growing corpse-cold.

Then those sharp eyes were off of him, and Anders' heart started pounding too hard for him to process what Cullen said next. Hawke received her payment and then her hand gripped his arm and she was marching him away from the Gallows with a casual farewell shouted over her shoulder as they left. The weight in his chest eased and he took what felt like his first breath in several minutes, and it was then that he realized they'd stopped walking. The Hawke siblings stood in front of him, Hawke's hands on his arms.

"There we are," she cooed, when she saw his eyes focus on her. He blinked the last of the white out of his vision. "Welcome back, Anders. Everything alright?"

"'Everything alright?' Sister, he could have gotten you both arrested!" Carver protested. "What were you thinking?"

"I wasn't," Anders croaked. He rubbed at his forehead. "I couldn't think."

"Well I could see that," Hawke said. She passed him her wineskin, and he took a grateful drink to wet his parched lips. She scrutinized him, but must have decided that she wasn't going to get any useful answers from him. "Come on, now that I'm sure you won't fall overboard, let's get back across to the city. It's almost time to meet Varric for cards."

* * *

The following week, Hawke came into his clinic. He was surprised that he didn't notice her at first, at least not until he heard her tell his assistant that she "had an appointment with Doctor Feelgood." He stepped away from the patient he was healing, after making sure that the boy's leg was set, and turned to see her coming toward him.

"Can we talk?" she asked. "Great! Let's go into the back." She dragged him into the back room that he used to store potions and poultices, and then sat herself down on the empty barrel that had already been there when he moved in.

"Hawke, what-"

"You grew up in the Fereldan Circle, didn't you?" she asked. He frowned.

"I don't see why it matters any, since I'm clearly not there now. But yes, I did." Hawke glanced around, and then leaned forward, her palms pressed to her knees.

"Is that why you reacted so badly when you saw Cullen?" she asked him quietly. "You were afraid he recognized you from the Circle?"

He thought about telling her the truth. He thought about telling her that half the templars in the Gallows could have been imports from Ferelden for all he'd ever paid attention to names and faces. That Meredith's young second-in-command was barely a pup for most of the time that Anders was in the Circle, and if their time had intersected he wouldn't remember.

That he'd looked at the Knight-Captain like he'd seen a ghost, because "Cullen" was his brother's name. But that would mean admitting that he had had a brother, once.

"Yes," he lied. "I was afraid that he'd recognize me. The templars wouldn't exactly be happy to see me, after all this time." She shifted in her seat and fixed him with her deadly focused blue gaze.

"He told me something else," she said. "He told me about how he was transferred - that there was a mage in Ferelden's Circle who turned to blood magic and started...corrupting other mages. Sacrificing Templars and mages who didn't agree with him to summon demons. You weren't..."

"I wasn't there," he said. That, at least, wasn't a lie. "I'd already run for the last time, before it happened. I didn't know anything about what Uldred had done, until a friend told me. It explained why the Templars who were sent to find me were so rough, though." He'd been expecting the regular amount of rough treatment. Silence, shackles, tossed over the back of a horse. But they'd taken him off the road, marched him into the hold of an abandoned keep when they saw Darkspawn on the road, and while they were in hiding there they'd beaten him.

He didn't tell Hawke any of that. She'd lived as an apostate her whole life, fearing the templars without knowing the true scope of their rage.

She relaxed at his assurance, and then hopped off the barrel. "Good," she said. "Just checking. Coming for cards tonight? I think you've really got a chance of winning this one."

"You say that every time, and every time I come home even poorer than I started," he said. She grinned and winked.

"You just have to work on your tells," she said. "You practically paint your hand on a big sign over your head." He shoved her playfully toward the door of the storage room.  
"Get out," he said. "I have work to do, and if I don't finish it then you won't see me tonight." She laughed and let him bully her out into the clinic.

"I'll see you later," she said, and waved her fingers at him before she left.

* * *

**Kirkwall, 9:34**

"When were you planning on telling me that your sister is a mage?" Cullen demanded, twisting his fingers in the edges of Carver's breastplate. His heart was still pounding from watching Marian Hawke duel the Arishok for all of their lives, and as soon as he'd heard that her brother had returned to the barracks, he confronted him. 

"So you could lock her up?" Carver snarled, not unlike a scruffed puppy. "Let go of me, Captain, have you lost your mind?"

Cullen's grip loosened, and Carver pulled back. He straightened his breastplate, and moved like he was expecting to have to draw his sword.

"My sister just saved all our lives," the young knight said. "Not half bad for a _mage_ , I'd say."

Cullen was struck mute. When had he fallen so far that he would assault a good soldier just because his family held magic? Was he that angry, that Kirkwall would now never allow their new Champion to be taken to the Circle? Marian was fighting for her life at this very moment, the Maker only knew if she would even survive the Arishok's wounds.

Carver knew this. Carver had been the one to carry Marian, unconscious, back to the estate while her friends rushed around him. When he felt like Cullen wasn't going to attack him again, he slumped into a chair with a clatter, took his helmet and threw it against the wall. Cullen stood over him, watching.

"She's all I have left," Carver murmured into the palms of his gloves. "I can't lose her, too."

Cullen thought about the letter from Mia, sitting on his desk awaiting reply. He thought about Carver's hand shaking as he handed Cullen his formal request for leave to attend his mother's funeral. After a beat, he took the chair that would belong to Carver's bunkmate if he had one, and he carried it over to sit next to Carver.

"I have an older sister," he said, to break the heavy silence. Then, more hesitantly: "I have an older brother, too. Or had. Maybe." The unusual phrasing made Carver lift his head to look up at him. Cullen looked out, somewhere around the middle of the room. "He was taken to the Circle when I was just two years old. I've never seen him since."

"Your brother was a mage?" Carver asked.

"Surprised?" Cullen asked, with a wry twist of his lips. "Needless to say, you can't breathe a word of this to anyone. I've never told a soul about him."

"Then why..."

"Because I joined the Templars hoping I could find the brother I never knew. Now I know that... Whatever happened to him, I doubt I'll ever see him again. I don't...know if I want to. I'm hardly the toddler he left behind. I'm not even the boy who joined the Templars with nothing but a dream. If I ever found out what happened to him... I would gain more in closure than I would lose." He drew in a deep breath, and then slowly focused his gaze and turned to face Carver. "What I'm trying to say is. What you have is different. You've known your sister your whole life. What are you doing _here_? Go home, Carver. Come back when she's pulled through like the stubborn mule she is." Carver's eyes welled with tears, but his mouth curved in a small smile, as he wiped them away.

"Don't call my sister a mule," he said. "She's an ass, through and through." Cullen laughed, then, and Carver stood. "What will the Knight-Commander say?" he asked, his voice quiet and smile fading.

"I'll worry about the Knight-Commander," Cullen said, rising to his feet. He pat Carver on the shoulder. "I think I gave you an order, Knight." Carver met his eyes, and then nodded.

"Thank you Ser," he said. "I won't forget this."

* * *

**Kirkwall, 9:37**

Knight-Captain Cullen was known by name and reputation to the Mage Underground. He was more of a threat than most other templars, being at the right hand of the Knight-Commander. They called him The War Dog, by code name, a title which suited him both for his Fereldan origin and for the merciless way he ran mages to ground when he got the scent of them.

But even as ruthless as he was in the pursuit of "maleficar," he never slaughtered the families of mages for "sheltering apostates." As long as the mages submitted quietly and didn't resort to blood magic, he would take them alive. After the death of Ser Thrask, it was the closest thing to mercy that any of Meredith's maleficar task force would offer.

For Anders, that wasn't enough. The Knight-Captain's "mercy" had spared only a few, in the grand scheme of things. The "hope" that he offered was immediately squandered by the cruel order of the Knight-Commander. The mages he brought in alive were still more often than not made tranquil immediately after.

It didn't matter that Knight-Captain Cullen "The War Dog" Rutherford was Anders' younger brother.

After the first time that he saw him in the Gallows, the first intense stare that he swore meant he'd been recognized, he'd started investigating on his own. He refused to be taken by surprise again. And what he'd figured out had only confirmed his fears. The man hunting down Anders' co-conspirators was the baby brother he'd left behind when he was taken to the Circle. The irony of one of his siblings joining the very order that had tried to keep him in chains was certainly not lost on Anders. If it was irony at all.

Anders never hated his mother and siblings for letting him be taken away. Not like he had hated the man who had called the Templars on his own son. But he had always assumed that they had moved on without him. That his siblings had been told they never had an older brother. Mia, who had been old enough to remember him, could have been convinced he was just a hired farmhand. Cullen had been barely able to walk when Anders had been dragged off to the Circle, he was too young to even remember Anders' presence in the house.

If Mia had written, like she had promised as a girl, the letters would never have reached him anyway. He had been reticent and mute for the first several weeks after he was taken from his home, and they had given him the name Anders out of frustration with his stubbornness. They needed something to write down, when they tapped his veins to make his phylactery, and he never bothered to correct them. It was easier to pretend that Grayson Rutherford was dead, like he assumed that his family had.

Still, even more than twenty years later, he recognized Cullen's golden curls, the ringlets that had always been long for a toddler, tight and springy when he tugged on them on the rare occasion that he'd been willing to sit still in Anders' lap. Those eyes that had looked like they held all the knowledge of the ages and the curiosity of someone seeing it all for the first time, now turned sharp and hawkish. Like their father's, the night the Templars had come to rip him from the only home he'd ever known.

He still remembered being ten years old and helping his laboring mother pace slowly around the room, fetching her water and rubbing her back while they'd waited for the midwife to come. Remembered watching his sister Mia while the midwife was helping deliver Cullen, and how Mia had told him in no uncertain terms that the new baby had better be a girl, so that she could have someone to do the house chores with someday.

He remembered the warm weight of the sleepy baby in his arms, and how he was the only one who could get Cullen to stop crying when his mouth hurt from teething. Sitting there holding him for hours after he finished his chores so his mother could get some rest. When he was a boy, he would have done anything for his siblings.

That time was over. That boy had died along with his name and it was better, now, that no one knew who he was. Least of all Cullen, who had made his distrust of mages clear to Hawke dozens of times. And Anders knew that what he was about to do now would prove his fear right.

Anders knew there was no mercy to be had for him anymore. Innocent people would die - _good_ people would die. But there had been good people among the mages, too. The back streets and polluted underbelly of Kirkwall had been stained red with blood from the Gallows to the docks long before Anders decided to finally act, he was just laying bare the injustice in a language that the complicit nobility in Hightown would understand.

Hawke's power and influence wouldn't be able to protect him much longer. Not even Varric's money - and Maker only knew the true breadth of the money that the dwarf had paid the Coterie over the years to leave his clinic alone - would be able to shield him from the wrath of the Knight-Commander. Or her War Dog.

"If there is a Maker..." Anders whispered, knelt in a mockery of prayer as he laid the last charge, hidden under a loose tile in a transept of the Chantry. "Spare him. Keep him away from here. Please." He knew that templars were sometimes stationed in the Chantry. He knew that they attended service, too. That when the explosives detonated, Cullen could well be inside.

But Anders couldn't let that change his mind. Something had to be done, to free the mages or stop Meredith or both or maybe neither, but he had to _try_. He couldn't spend one more day paralyzed under the burden of concession and compromise. Listening to Elthina encouraging the mages to meet Meredith in the middle, as Meredith fell further and further into her radical madness. With every one of their steps forward, Meredith had taken two steps back toward the edge. And Elthina had been there at every public argument, with her calm, disapproving voice, telling the mages "Can't you just learn to compromise?"

No more. No more concession, no more compromise. No more platitudes. No more Elthina. The woman didn't deserve to die, but she needed to be removed. He prayed that it would be fast. For her and for everyone else in the cathedral. Once he was sure that his job was done and the explosives were ready, he stood to return to Hawke.

Maybe one day Cullen would understand his cause. Maker willing, Cullen would live long enough to see that this was justice.


End file.
